2300 AD Mission Arcturus

Station Approach: We all crowded up close to the view screen to get a good look at Arcturus Station when our ship moved up into visual range of the place.

It wasn't an ecouraging sight.

The place had been hit hard, that was for certain. The station was designed with a big rotating wheel that was supposed to provide artifificial gravity for the scientists on board, but the central axis of the station was always supposed to align with Arcturus. The first thing we noticed was that it wasn't just the wheel part of the station that was turning - the whole station was.

Contact with the implacable, warlike alien race known as the Kafers was first made in 2395 by a French research outpost orbiting the star Arcturus, four and half light years out-arm from Eta Bootis. Two years later, all communication with the French station abruptly ceased, and it is now assumed that the station was destroyed by a surprise - and unprovoked - attack by the Kafers. The following year, in 2398, a Kafer armada struck Eta Bootis, and the Kafer War began in earnest.

Eventually the Kafers were driven back from Eta Bootis system (except for a small number of ground troops which remain to threaten the safety of colonists on the planet Aurore) and even from Arcturus, where the ill-fated research station hangs in orbit around that giant, enigmatic star. But the victorious human forces were unable to remain at Arcturus, being forced to return to Hochbaden for the sorely needed repairs and supplies. Station Arcture remained unexplored, the fate of its crew a mystery.

One German Kommodore decided to seize the moment, determined to take a multi-national mission team from Eta Bootis to Station Arcture before the Kafers could return and before his superiors could react. He planned the mission team with the purposes of reconnaissance and rescue - Mission Arcturus.

You are invited to join Mission Arcturus and to explore what's left of the human research station between the battle feelts.

I've run this partway through online, with some extra work on descriptions and graphics, to positive response from the group. The mission is well-structured to throw the characters back on their own resources in an unusual hard-SF environment, playing [...]

A good combat/Aliens like scenario. Combat is a claustrophobic environment. While the Kafer adversaries are preety challenging. There is some sympathy for them in the end.(the hostages actually develop a stockholm syndrome for 1 Kafer). [...]

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